100th Anniversary of the Death of Frederick Winslow Taylor, the Father of Modern Scientific Management

It was exactly 100 years ago today that Frederick Winslow Taylor died. He is considered the father of modern scientific management, the first management consultant, president of the ASME, and the first management guru. He invented and patented the first modern tool steel, designed new golf clubs, and optimized the growing of grass. He could … Read more

The Seven Types of Waste (Muda) – Now with 24 More Types of Waste Absolutely Free!

One popular and well-known concept of the Toyota Production System is the elimination of waste, in Japanese also called muda (無駄). It is one of the three evils of manufacturing systems, the others being unevenness (mura, 斑) and overburden (muri, 無理). In this post I would like to go through the details of waste with … Read more

Benefits and Flaws of CONWIP in Comparison to Kanban

In my last posts I discussed the basics of CONWIP systems (Constant Work In Progress) and answered some frequently asked questions Part 1 and Part 2 on CONWIP. Overall, CONWIP is a pretty cool alternative to kanban, also establishing a pull system. It has some very valuable advantages, but it also comes with some disadvantages. … Read more

Frequently Asked Questions on CONWIP Systems – Part 1

In the last post, I started with the basics of a CONWIP system, where CONWIP stands for Constant Work In Progress. However, there are some more frequently asked questions that are also important for CONWIP. These I will explain here. Initially, I wanted to write one quick post explaining CONWIP. However, as it happens all … Read more

The Folly of EPEI Leveling in Practice – Part 2

In my last post, I started to show the main reasons why EPEI leveling with a fixed repeating schedule so often fails (for details on EPEI leveling, see Theory of Every Part Every Interval (EPEI) Leveling). This post continues with more reasons and also gives some advice on how to reduce the damage or even … Read more

Imprint (Impressum) and Privacy Policy

General Since operating a website is potentially a legal minefield anywhere, I have added to the best of my knowledge and abilities the legalese below, containing the imprint (in German: Impressum) and the Privacy Policy. This is updated to reflect the new European GDPR Regulation being active from May 25th 2018. Since the website is … Read more

A Critical Look at Goldratt’s Drum-Buffer-Rope Method

Eliyahu Goldratt developed different methods on how to manage production systems. These methods are nowadays known as the Theory of Constraints, or TOC for short. One key method described is called Drum-Buffer-Rope, or DBM for short. Similar to Kanban or CONWIP, it aims to constrain the work in progress (WIP) in the system. There is … Read more

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